Here’s some scoop on How I Met Your Mother from this week’s (Posted on 8/21/12) Ask Ausiello column.

Question: Got a How I Met Your Mother slap bet update? —Kelley

Ausiello: Slap No. 7 will hit when you least expect it, according to exec producer Craig Thomas. “I don’t want to say exactly when the slaps are going to happen, but my personal opinion is if the very last moment of the entire series was a slap and you just cut to black, I’d be happy,” he tells us. “I don’t want to say where, when or how, but there’s more slap action coming.” Bonus HIMYM scoop: The show is rapidly aging Lily and Marshall’s son for a series of a flash-forward sequences. We’ll see Marvin at age 2 when he blurts out his first word, then again at age 6 when he’s facing a crisis at home, and then finally at age 13 when he suffers his first heartbreak.

Question: Will Barney’s Ducky return on HIMYM this season? —Javiera

Ausiello: Sounds like it. “How I Met Your Mother is a bad horror movie,” says Thomas with a laugh. “Everything comes back at some point. You think it’s dead, and it just rears up at you one more time.”